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Chernobyl Still An Expensive Problem Over 30 Years Later

Nuclear power can be a smart way to provide large amounts of electricity apart from carbon-based fuel, but when things do wrong, they can go horribly, horribly wrong. The Fukoshima plant in Japan suffered a catastrophic failure in 2011 following a large earthquake and subsequent tsunami, and is still being cleaned up.

Image courtesy Wikipedia

Over 30 years ago in the Ukraine in 1984, there was a partial meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor number 4, leading to over 30 deaths at the time and many ongoing health and safety issues in the years following, including the permanent evacuation of a sizable area around the plant.

The emergency steel and concrete bunker that was initially constructed to entomb the reactor and minimize the release of radioactive material is failing, and a huge new structure is being completed at a cost of some 1.5 billion Euros in order to prevent the release of more radioactive material.

Also, once completed in 2017, it will give the Ukrainians time to repair the original containment area in order to provide a longer-term safe mitigation of the radioactive leakage.